Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Friday March 09, 2007 @10:08AM
from the but-what-if-i-wanna dept.

gondwannabe writes "Here are Five Things You Aren't Allowed to Discuss About Linux. With considerable chutzpa, an insightful Rob Enderle takes on what he considers five dogmas in the OSS community and explains why they're wrong. Examples: Linux is secure, "communes" actually work in the long haul, and that Linux is "pro-developer."

The fact that the man is on SCO's payroll and a raving lunatic who tends to compare Linux fans with terrorists also doesn't void him from offering criticism. On the other hand, posting comments from the man here is blatant flamebait/trolling behaviour.

Rob Enderle doesn't offer criticisms. He offers flame trolls like you accused this person of being.

Never once has Rob offered any good insight- only name flinging and transparent bullshit. It's sobad that his pet name in some circles is Pretenderle. His articles and papers aren't really verygood and don't have very many of these things called "facts" behind them.

Oh, but Enderle is a great writer! Look at the grammar in this sentence:

"Presenting the products and companies in abstract was actually rather brilliant, however, I can't find a Steve Jobs-like person I can congratulated for this excellent work."

He's such a good writer that he can laugh in the face of a comma splice. He is so good that he can make up new rules (like "An independent marker word can join two independent clauses because I say so.") and people will think all the better of him for it. He deftly taunts us with our normal grammatical expectations and then pulls them away at the last minute, leaving us awash in a sea of sophomoric writing -- trapped in his world, right where he wants us.

On this same thread, he's pioneering the way in new lines of logic. For example, normally, if you saw this:

"If we are actually doing an evaluation we have to evaluate what we are actually going to end up using and it isn't generic "Linux.""... and then this:

"Do your assessment with a real product against real metrics. SuSe and Red Hat are both capable enough to compete without cheating."... but it was immediately followed by this:

"The easy path here would be to present the different security models for the different distributions but, for this purpose, I'm going to leave Linux in abstract and talk about the unique security problem it represents."... you might be tempted to think of the phrase "double standard". Perhaps even the word "hypocrite". However, once you saw that the author was Enderle, you'd realize that this was not, in fact, a double-standard spewing hypocrite. Rather, you'd realize that this was another ingenous attempt at postmodern critique of double standards themselves, made using the language of hypocrisy. In doing so, Enderle attacks the concept with itself. It's meta-linguistics that he's playing with here. Utterly brilliant.

Well the truth is the/. crowd loves peoples 'opinions', ones they agree or disagree with, as long as they are actually their own personal opinions.

What they hate is paid for trolls who are not expressing their opinion, and are just spreading marketing.

I honestly tried to read the article, it 's not all that well written and like marketing just repeats itself again and again, so a quick skim was sufficient. The fun parts are, the executive board at IBM will be surprised to find out they are a commune and apparently Oracle will be joining them in commune status. I still can't understand why the windrones see Linux as godlike (there has to be some seriously paranoid things going on at Redmond), I just don't get it. For me it is fun and provides a far more cost efficient way forward, creates a more competitive software environment, and that is pro developer because it will give developers access to areas that M$ specifically excludes them from and has in fact used criminal tactics in the past to drive them out of those areas of software development.

The oddest part of the whole thing is somehow that every Linux contributor is somehow responsible for the opinions of every other Linux contributor or even end user. This of course comes back to your point, yes, people are free to express their own 'opinions' and just because they use Linux does not mean that they Linux community (not a commune, hippies? well at least it's not as bad as cancerous, communist, mafioso, terrorist, zealots - yay flower power) well attempt to censor them, and congratulations for the M$ board for paying for yet another personal attack, arn't you proud today Bill, as you shills pursue that nasty PJ, who dares to volunteer services for free, can't have people expressing their opinion when it disagrees with the M$ bottom line.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about Linux is IT advocacy. IT shouldn't be an advocate of any product, because it needs to make determinations between them.

I think my eyes are messing with me. IT shouldn't be an advocate of any product? Am I missing something?

He's right, it's our job to determine the best product for a given task given budget constraints, resources available, etc. But once we determine the best product, how can we NOT advocate it?

This following quote is very telling about the author's motives:

The reason Linux has been abstracted into a concept is so it doesn't have to compete on merit. It can be anything, in concept, it needs to be to win a deal.

Enderle clearly implies there was some sort of deliberate conspiracy to deceive by the people advocating linux. WTF? Does he really believe that?

I hate Linux Nazis and I don't think Linux or OSS is the best solution in all -- or even most cases. However, there are a lot of things in this article that are just wacky.

That said, Enderle does make some very good observations on community based works (that apply outside of IT as well) and some interesting comments on security. Just read him with an extra critical eye.

I advocate linux for the same reason that I advocate a lot of tools that work...having such things nearby makes my life easier. Every time some piece of microsoft infrastructure breaks, I replace it with linux.

I'm not sure how linux security is a myth either...All the DMZ machines at work are linux machines, and I've never had any problems with them...I get more problems from the windows machines that sit on the plague-ridden windows-centric supposedly secure corporate WAN. My home network is secured by a linux router and I've never had problems there either, despite the massive sort of bot scanning that infests consumer ISPs in this country (I get faaaaaar more security hits at home).

As for being developer friendly...When I can install windows and have it come with compilers and libraries for half a dozen different programming languages, then we'll talk about "developer friendliness". Fedora recently started bundling Tomcat with their distros as an installable option...Anyone who has ever installed Tomcat knows how valuable that is.

Linux has it's issues, and it's not perfect, but it is a good tool, and it has a great place in IT infrastructure.

I advocate linux for the same reason that I advocate a lot of tools that work...having such things nearby makes my life easier.

Exactly. When Linux started to become mainstream, I took some time to step back and evaluate why I liked it so much, to make sure that I wasn't just jumping on a bandwagon. The truth is, I prefer Linux because I preferred Solaris when I was in college. Why did I like Solaris so much, though? It wasn't my first OS - the Commodore 64 "OS" was my first (and it was very gentle with me). I did DOS for years after that before a kindly soul who lived in the university computer lab opened my eyes to that tiny room of Sun terminals hidden behind the huge lab of PCs. Solaris - that is, Unix - just "clicked" with me. Everything was designed to work with everything else in a holistic, hard to characterize way. No longer was I working around deficiencies in the design of the system - the system was working for me. Going back to DOS (and later Windows) was just painful. When I graduated and discovered that the only jobs available to a non-top-ten university CS graduate were programming DOS or Windows, I wept. When I discovered that if I wanted a computer at home, I could choose between DOS or Mac, I gnashed my teeth in frustration. (I graduated college just about the same time Linus started coding kernel 1.0). When I first started hearing of Linux (Debian was my first distribution... and it was not gentle) - by all that is holy and good, it works like Solaris did! I have a C compiler! (The same C compiler I used in college, in fact) It's right there! It's bundled with the distribution! And look - there's vi! Ah - I was home again, at long last.

Solaris - that is, Unix - just "clicked" with me. Everything was designed to work with everything else in a holistic, hard to characterize way. No longer was I working around deficiencies in the design of the system - the system was working for me.

Those who say Unix is not user friendly are wrong. Unix is really _very_ user friendly, it's just a bit more picky about who it makes friends with.

(I also am a Solaris aficionado, to the point where I'd consider taking a pay cut to work in a Solaris environme

Things are modular and transparent. If you have problems theyare easy to see and easy to get information about. There's alsousually some other way to (successfully) approach what you'redoing. You have a meaningful choice of tools.

Yet again I found myself in a situation where I was able to finish off a little side-project or curiosity in a short amount of time purely because of the fantastic availability of open-source software. Then I read this article that tries to be very objective about the "open-source mythos" but completely misses what is for me the main point. Open-source software, including Linux, is empowering in ways that continue to boggle!

I found myself resurrecting a 15-year-old project simulating a double-pendulum and exploring chaotic motion. I did this project as a student, and wanted to restore aspects of this now that I'm a professor. But most of my original code was lost (I had some source code and a binary that worked in DOS) and I didn't have much free time to rewrite it from scratch. But with the virtue of open-source libraries like Glut and the GSL, I was able to make the simulation live again! And beyond that, by using public documentation on a FITS image standard and some astronomical image analysis software (SAOImage DS9), I was able to go even beyond the original project with a minimum of programming fuss and create some beautiful fractal images that delineate between chaotic and periodic motion of the double-pendulum system. It's a great teaching tool now.

This was probably the 100th time open source tools and libraries have benefited my work in ways that could not be replaced by anything else. And that's not even counting high-level languages and their open-source interpreters like Tcl, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.

If you overlook the synergies in open source software, you miss the point of it completely.

Just like Bill is offering Office 2007 to Australian students for $75 - when the academic program in the US never offered Office - the Microsoft cash cow - at all? Only the OS's - to get students hooked on Windows early - because otherwise all students would be using Linux?

The only reason Microsoft is offering its compilers for free is because all the students couldn't afford them and ended up using either Linux or the OSS free compilers or other languages not supported by Microsoft.

We should leave that job to hired shills like Rob "Ferrari Laptop" Enderle:

"One impressive piece of execution is that when you fire the machine up it plays a WAV file of a Ferrari race car revving its engine. That alone is worth the relatively low $1,899 price of admission. Even when I'm in a meeting, I don't turn the sound off because of the unbridled envy that seems to show up in the eyes of my, granted mostly male, co-attendees. So far no one has complained."

when you fire the machine up it plays a WAV file of a Ferrari race car revving its engine. That alone is worth the relatively low $1,899 price of admission. Even when I'm in a meeting, I don't turn the sound off

Wouldn't it be a shame if there was someone in that meeting who's very highly strung - you know, the kind that jumps at any sudden noise? And it would be a real pity if that person happened to be standing near it holding a large cup of $beverage when it went "VROOOM".

The reason Linux has been abstracted into a concept is so it doesn't have to compete on merit. It can be anything, in concept, it needs to be to win a deal.

He then goes on to treat Linux as a concept for the rest of the article, which is so stupid it's not worth reading.

Linux is a kernel. Free Software is a concept. Both can be talked about intelligently. Linux can be compared to other kernels. Free software can be compared to other development models. The rest of his "arguments" are just as big a waste of time.

As someone else pointed out, this is the guy the NYT quit quoting. Now I know why.

Why are you sick of hearing that linux is a kernel? It is a statement of fact.

ntoskrnl.exe is a kernel, which is used as part of the Windows operating system. Darwin is a kernel, which is used as part of the MacOSX operating system, and can be used elsewhere as well.

The difference in the operating systems that linux is used in, is that there are many different variants available, from the ones used in picture frames to the ones in supercomputers and everything in between.

The argument that "Linux is the kernel" is very weak in my opinion because how useful is JUST a kernel?... It is a clever sleight of hand that advocates use when convenient.... See what I mean? You can't make the argument that "Linux is more secure than Windows"

I see your strawman and call it BS again. What advocate are you talking about? Most are not confused by the issue like M$ would want them to be. Enderle does not make sense because he's confused, debating the specifics of his confusion is a w

How well will Linux run without a shell? Just fine, thank you. Since we are currently discussing the feasibility of referring to the kernel alone when we say Linux, we should keep ourselves consistent. The Linux kernel will chug along quite happily with no command shell whatsoever. But even that is somewhat beside the point. There are plenty of other shells. There are even other sh compatible shells. If bash has a terminal flaw, then everybody will just switch over to using something else or get hax0

Let's take indemnification; this should be a topic every company should suddenly be looking very closely at. Microsoft just got nailed with a whopping $1.53 Billion, that's with a "B", judgment for the use of a common music standard. They did this because they indemnified Dell and Gateway, the companies initially targeted. If they had used Linux instead of Windows, it would be Dell and Gateway hit with some fraction of this judgment (and even a fraction of $1.52B is a big number). So where is the coverage? Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?

(emphasis mine)

This is just misleading. Surely Enderle knows the truth, which is that the major vendors do provide indemnification, just like Microsoft? Red Hat do [redhat.com], as do Novell [novell.com]; heck, even Oracle [PDF warning] [oracle.com].

"Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?" writes Enderle. Yes, this was a hot topic - many months ago. As a result of that chatter, the major vendors started to provide or emphasized that they already provide indemnification. Is Enderle really qualified to write about Linux if he doesn't know that? (I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he isn't intentionally misleading readers)

Given that I can't read the article (must be running on a windows server hehehehe) I'll just chime in that most of the time when someone is talking smack about OSS (not just Linux) it irks me because it's ignorant shite that gets repeated enough until it's true. Like "Linux is hard to install" or "GCC doesn't optimize well" or "Word is more professional" or...

Mostly I'd be happy if people who don't embrace OSS [even enough to learn about it] would just shut their gobs so others could make up their minds for themselves.

What it has to do with an article written by Rob Enderle though, escapes me... He's a shill, a paid propagandist, and not a particularly good one at that. Even the NY Times won't allow his spouting within its once-proud pages. In short, this article wasn't worth the electrons needed to convey it from the screen to your eyes.

Rob Enderle is a known troll from the SCO fame, who got bunch of hits by taking the pro-SCO stance. He is generally writing anti-linux articles whenever he can on any subject that comes along. All he cares about is the number of hits his articles generate and posting on slashdot certainly helps that. He is also "THE" reason, why I stopped to read Forbes.com, since they publish his drivel.

I'm not sure if these are the five things, since the site is Slashdotted, but here's five more I've noticed you cannot discuss about Linux:
1. The negative effects of having multiple distros
2. The GIMP's interface
3. 3rd-Party games (though these days, there ARE a fair amount of good FOSS games)
4. BSD good, Gentoo for ricers
5. Fight Club

How many versions of Windows are there now? I have no freaking clue which of the six or so versions of Vista I'm supposed to buy even if I wanted to, then there's XP32, XP64, Pro versions, Home versions, cut-down foreign versions, Windows 2003 or whatever it is.

All versions of Vista install the same way. Some just have more extra features than others. The same company supports all of them, in the same manner. As for previous versions of Windows, well, that's all moot since they're kinda *the previous versions!* This is like saying "omg there are multiple types of Xterras to buy I have no freaking clue whether I'm supposed to get the off-road or SE or a used 2004 one or whatever. And then there's all the exterior colors to choose from which one is the right one for me!?":-P

Oh yeah, one of the reasons you can't talk about them is because every Linux zealot is so single-mindedly focused on Microsoft all the time that they refuse to agree that Linux has a problem unless Microsoft also has the same problem.For instance,User: "Printer setup in Linux is hard."Zealot: "Oh yeah!? Well printer setup in Windows is even harder!"

See how the Linux Zealot argument has absolutely nothing to do with the original complaint?

It's clear where Linux developers have set their quality standard: rig

How about the negative affects of having 7000 distros? I'm not against having having more than 1 distro, but it seems to me like a lot of people put out distros just for the sake of it.

What negative effect? Most of the people running those distributions aren't contributing anything to anyone. Any of those distributions that is successful for long is probably contributing changes upstream.

It's good that the market is full of players. That means that even if we lose dozens of them, there will still be someone to carry the torch. How crap would it be if you wanted a different linux distribution because your distribution of choice had gone to shit, or failed to ever get their shit together even, and there was nothing to switch to?

The term fud gets thrown around a lot. It seems if anyone says something critical about something else, the supporters of the attacked thing, cry fud. So this piece should be saved so that it can be pointed to as a great example of just what fud is. Fear Uncertainty Doubt. I mean he wastes no time, talking about a linux 'cover up' and how such cover ups can lead to disaster, bringing in global warming and the war in Iraq. That's some serious Fear.

Then his first 'point', "Is Linux a Myth?". This pretty much nails uncertainty and he is just getting started. The best part is he will lay down why he thinks it is wrong to 'abstract' linux, while his entire article rests purely on doing that, because it would be too hard to be more specific.

The doubt is spread throughout - "Is Linux Secure?", "Is Linux is(sic) 'Open'?" And supports this by saying he gets email that isn't nice and that means one can't honestly discuss Linux. (This is shortly after he criticized the open source community for in-fighting - these kind of contradicitions are so common in this piece, the mind boggles.)

I love the bugaboo about how a lot of linux contributors don't use their real names and could actually be spies. He compares it to Soviet Russia which dovetails nicely with his 'commune' question. Oh noes! Linux is the red menace!! (He's smart enough not to be too direct with this but it is rather plain to see).

Reading the comments that follow the article is just as much fun. Someone says when they can plug in a usb stick and it is autodetected, or intall a program by double clicking on it, they will consider linux. Apparently it's been a few years since he actually has seen a gnome or kde desktop. I do those things regularly and I'm running a couple versions behind on my favorite desktop distro.

My guess is that this is another attack/FUD piece for which he was well paid by Microsoft. He has zero credibility with people who know and understand OS's. It's those pesky PHBs that this is oriented toward, unfortunately.

They can, but it takes a little more traffic to do it (or a very poorly configured install of Apache, where only, say, 10 httpd process threads are allowed or something)...

Case in point: during Linux Lunacy 2002, I ftp'd up a recording of a round-table talk session (ab't the --then upcoming-- 2.6 kernel, w/ Linus Torvalds). The file was a ~60MB.ogg file (sorry - didn't have the presence-of-mind to compress the audio) to an anonymous server running at the school I taught at. It was an eMachines cast off w

I'm not a coder, I'm a scientist. Sometimes I have to code. Getting the tools to do so is many times easier (faster, cheaper, less confusion, etc.) for me on Linux than on Windows. A colleague recently suggested I try quantlib [sourceforge.net]. He also mentioned that they require Boost [boost.org] which can be a real pain in the ass to get compiled and installed on an XP machine. I went home and installed both of these libraries in 10s of seconds with Synaptic.

Since we can't yet mod down stories, and I know a lot of you are aching to direct your mod points at someone, I thought as a courtesy, I'd post here so you could use me as a close enough proxy to modding down the story. Given as I've often criticized Linux.

Just try to discuss Linux from and ease of use, UI, user perspective and you will get a lot of Linux geeks telling you to tough it out, or, my fave "My grandmother uses linux and doesn't complain." (Your grandmother probably isn't installing apps and trying to make it more than a web browsing/email appliance.)

Unexpected, wild assed UI's are a problem in Linux and OSS in general.

Convoluted instructions, HowTo, etc. telling the user to dig into the guts of a conf and set oddly named, poorly documented settings.

Did I mention geek developed UI's?

Odd assed error messages that don't tell you why something failed to run or install, but it dumps everything a geek would want to know about it, onto the screen.

UI's that were developed by some pseudo-genius who THINKS he has a better grasp of the user experience.

No, you are not allowed to talk about these things, because you will be tagged as a heretic in the religiOS wars.

Sure, "discuss" all you want. But you wont be discussing with me and you wont get any response until you actually file bug reports and try to come up with solutions to the problems you find. That is what I consider to be constructive work and not just general hand-waiving. Not long ago there was an article called 30 days with Ubuntu [hardocp.com] posted on Slashdot. It detailed problems the author found in Ubuntu Linux. That is useful information and inspired me to submit a few patches to fix the authors problem. Judging by the number of bug reports submitted each day to popular free software projects, it seems others are too capabable of constructively discuss and help Linux improve.

Yours and this articles authors complaining, however, is dead weight. There is nothing I can do about a complaint such as "geek developed UI's." The reason those UI's look "geek developed" is because not enough people have taken the time to constructively critisize them. As a developer, there is nothing I'd like to hear more than constructive feedback on my UI's. But as commens such as that it is "wild assed" does not help.

I think that is a really BIG problem with the people discussing Linux. What? the fact that people discuss things like UI, ease of use, installation, etc of Linux, and they compare it to any other operating system.If we were to make the comparison exact, then the Linux UI sucks for the end user (wait! dont mod me down yet!), because an end user would not know what to do with skb_queue_empty , kfree_skb, skb_shared, skb_unshare or any of the other functions provided by the Linux interface. Do you see where

> I think that is a really BIG problem with the people discussing Linux.> What? the fact that people discuss things like UI, ease of use, installation,> etc of Linux, and they compare it to any other operating system.>>If we were to make the comparison exact, then the Linux UI sucks for the end user>(wait! dont mod me down yet!), because an end user would not know what to do with>skb_queue_empty , kfree_skb, skb_shared, skb_unshare or any of the other functions>provided by the Linux

I'm sorry, my logic checker immediately flagged this as a hopeless oxymoron, much like Enderele, sans the oxy.

Remember, Enderle is the guy who's predicted the demise of the Macintosh more than anyone else. [macobserver.com] If there's a topic involving the Mac, Windows, or Linux, there's no question he'll be on the wrong side of it. It's amazing to see a pundit come in at a full 1750 MiliDvorak's on the Idiot Tech Pundit Scale.

Anytime I read the phrase "Rob Enderle says," I know I can stop reading right there.

He is very insightful. You just read his article and do the exact opposite of what he says. The guy must have written a thousand articles and the odds are only 1/2^1000 that he could have gotten every single one of them wrong accidentally, so he is clearly a genius who only pretends to be dumb.

1. Is Linux a Myth?
There is no "Linux", talk about Red Hat or SuSE or whatever, not Linux in general.

2. Is Linux Secure?
Despite what I just said, talking about general Linux is convenient, so I'll now do it myself. Then go into a rant about "spies" with an off-topic swipe at PJ of Groklaw, while not saying anything at all about security in the OS sense.

3. Do Communes Work?
Community efforts never work. Just look at the debate over the GPL3, which by the way is "anti-business" and a threat to intellectual property everywhere.

4. Is Linux Pro-Developer, or Pro-You?
I'm not smart enough to understand open source business models, so I'll imply you can't make money giving away software, then throw out some FUD that Linux equals outsourcing. But I'll close the section by acknowledging that Google is making money using Linux, to pretend to lend some balance to my analysis.

5. Is Linux "Open"?
If you say Linux isn't ready for the desktop, you will be fired, receive death threats, and be sexually harassed.

Wow, what a brilliant article. We should stick this guy in a room with Katz and Dvorak and see who can come up with the most idiotic BS.

Well, let's compare them to business. When a business, like, say, Enron, fails, people's lives are ruined. When the captains of industry send in the goons to break up the unions, people are even killed. But when the Linux "commune" has a problem...

and the two sides have, as they seem more than willing to do, degraded into name-calling.

people's feelings are hurt. Sounds like a complete system failure to me. Bring back old fashion capitalism!

This and other comments lead me to believe that he "Just doesn't get it" (tm). He says that GPL 3 is could be real bad, keep your eyes open. What he doesn't mention, is that there's a ton of stuff under GPL 2 that you will still be able to use, you'll still be able to release under GPL 2, and tell the GPL 3 people to pound sand. What you won't be able to do is take new nifty stuff that someone put under GPL 3 and not abide by their terms. Well, guess what, you can't take Microsoft's, or Apple's or Adobe's software and not abide by the most basic of their terms which is "give us lots of money for which you don't get many rights."

He thrives on attention and absolutely delights in "proving" Linux users are raving fanatics, though that speech shows just who the raving fanatic is. Please don't give this guy any more web stats or attention.

Presumably due to a slashdot effect, I have been unable to read that posting. But the author was obviously wrong about one thing: it is possible to discuss these things about Linux. Sadly enough, the discussion here is mostly about why "he is wrong", with a few notable exceptions. If everything was so great about Linux then people wouldn't spend money on Windows and MacOS X. The fact is, there are pros and cons are there is personal choice. And there are evangelists.

If everything was so great about Linux then people wouldn't spend money on Windows and MacOS X. The fact is, there are pros and cons are there is personal choice.

I have never seen anyone argue that Linux or Windows or OS X was perfect or that they did not all have pros and cons. The thing is, the article in question did not bring up really any valid points about the cons of Linux, but instead resorted to attacks on random things, many of which are the same in both Windows and Linux. I didn't see much, if anything, in the way of intelligent, informed criticism or ways Linux could improve. I have a hard time believing the article's author does not know better than a

Much of the reaction here helps make Enderle's point. While the quality of his article is mixed, he does make some valid points. For example, Linix security isn't any better than Windows if you run as super user (the way users run in XP) and then install some random executable. However, most Linux users are more savy than Windows users and avoid doing that. GPL 3 is *most certainly* anti-business and most of the money in Linux is in services.

What is most spot on is that the Linux community is not a place where open discussion is valued and those who refuse to adopt the purist view are attacked as fiercely as the Revolutionary Guard in Iran would attack a woman walking around in a halter top. Linux is just a technology and it has flaws like any other technology. Linux as a business has its flaws just like Microsoft or Gooogle (opps, Google does no evil, right??). GPL is a socialist economic model and much more onerous and way less free than Apache licenses.

let's have discussion. Let's have CIVIL debate. I understand that Linux devotees treat any comments that don't follow the orthodox view as heresy, but if you believe in "free and open", shouldn't it include the discussion and debate.

First section, fairly accurate really. Linux is always talked about as one great thing, it isnt. Some are god awful, some are dedicated to a single task, some are home user friendly, others are command line. Just as he says this pretty much makes Linux perfect at everything, even though that is often far far from the truth because there is no single Linux platform that will accomplish all of the jobs a particular person requires.

He is right the comparisons are often deeply flawed because they do not compare Ubuntu to Windows or Red Hat to OSX they compare Linux or sometimes even just *nix to the competition. You might as well compare the traits of one person to the best selection of traits from a thousand other people. That one person is going to feel pretty awful after that.

This isnt just a bash on Linux because he is also right that there are distributions that can stand up to some real comparisons, its just more often than not they never get the chance.

Second section. Starts off well his previous point stands and its all too true that if someone doesnt know what they are doing you will always be running things insecurely regardless of which O/S your using. He does go a little astray here but there is still an important point, in an open community where people are expected to get help from the army of other users (This is often touted as a benefit of using Linux, and usually thats very true.) maintaining decent security is going to become a mine field. Its a little paranoid, its probably not a common occurence but there is a risk. Though I think the whole thing can be summed up in saying that net security is only as good as those securing it.

Third section. Again pretty much spot on, the community behind Linux has produced some awesome stuff but it is impossible to ignore the infighting that is going on nearly constantly. The GPL3 being an excellent example of this. He quite clearly isnt saying that the community is wrong and it should be disbanded his last statements want the users of Linux to actually get more involved. Id expect people to be supporting this much. There are some distinctly anti community events going on and that is what this section is pointing too.

Fourth section. The money Linux makes is undoubtedly fairly small. Ive seen a lot of people argue about how open source can make money, thats probably true but its rare. Very rare. Red Hat is one of the largest open source companies ever yet you scale it up, or scale MS down and youll see a huge difference in profits. There is simply no way you can take such a slash in profits without that having a knock on effect to the employees.

Im no financial expert and I dont have enough figures but a lot of even this section appears to make sense.

Fifth section, and here is the prophesy. I know this guy has a sketchy past with these articles, I know that there are flaws even here, but by in large he makes some really good points. You would not know this from the endless insults and put downs streaming out of this thread. Ive no doubt that everything he has said about those who are even more extreme is true as well. Linux has become like some kind of religion to some people and it virges on being genuinly frightening at times.

Hes proven it right here. There must be about a half dozen comments on this thread that have actually attempted to discuss his points, or citisize them properly. Most are more content to just slag him off, or quote obscure parts and strawman him. No one, no matter what there opinion, deserves some of the harrasment these people have to endure.

Ill probably have annoyed some people just posting this, and in case they have been annoyed then try take a moment and remember. Its just an operating system, this is just an opinion, relax.

It's clear Enderle provokes a strong reaction from the rabble (I'm one of the rabble, back up there), but the blog entry is a good one, worthy of discussion, even as framed.

If Linux is to be taken seriously and adopted within large corporations, it does need to address those five points specifically. You can't convince upper management of the merits of your argument by using your Crazy Fist Number Eleven Slashdot Flame technique, so address those concerns rationally and in terms of business concerns, or you'll lose.

Widespread adoption among consumers should be ruled out categoricallly, until you can download a distro in one shot, and have it find your wireless adapter, Bluetooth adapter, and all your laptop goodies, without once have to su-su-sudo a single command line. For any laptop coming out of Dell or Toshiba, sold at Circuit City or Best Buy, and so forth. And there ain't a single distro that can do it today.

"The reason Linux has been abstracted into a concept is so it doesn't have to compete on merit."

Bullshit. I does fine on merit. Maybe people just say "Linux" instead of "Ubuntu 6.10" or "Mandrake 10.1" is because the former is the way people talk. You know just like they say "Windows" instead of the exact version.

Also most distros have so much common code (Sort of the whole point of open source) that when talking about a feature it just makes more sense to say "Linux" then to rattle off a definitive list.

Besides, when people talk about Linux it covers a lot of things. Just like when people talk about.Net. There's the kernel and the windowing environment, and all the other programs that are put together to make a useable operating system. Again that's just the nature of open source.

This guy is nothing more than an anti-Linux, anti open source troll. Here are some of his "Words of Wisdom":

" The reason Linux has been abstracted into a concept is so it doesn't have to compete on merit."

" Linux is surrounded by people who generally don't even use real names and often "exaggerate" what they do for a living."

" PJ, the woman who allegedly heads up this legal resource, is currently ducking service from SCO and lord knows what she is covering up."

On the last example I must comment. SCO indeed wants to put PJ in the spot light. Not for any reason other than to harass her. Through her efforts she has shined a light on SCO's legal scam.

PJ has stated that she is extremely shy. Most people don't know what it is like to be so shy that you would do almost anything rather than be put on center stage. I know what it's like. For people like us written communication is no big deal but face to face and sometimes even phone contact causes unbelievable anxiety.

It's pretty shitty for this guy to imply that PJ has anything to hide.

The Five Things You Arent Allowed to Discuss About LinuxPosted by Rob Enderle on Monday 26 February 2007 at 7:44 pm

I started writing about Linux not because I thought it interesting, fascinating, or even because I liked to code (I dont).

I started writing about Linux because I was told I couldnt and the more people told me I couldnt, and particularly when they said or else, the more the Linux dirty laundry became attractive to me. In short, if anyone bothers to look at the sequence of events, they will see that the Linux community pushed me down this path. Granted I didnt fight much, but I have this thing about cover-ups. I believe they can lead to disasters both within a company and across a nation; here in the U.S. this last point, whether it be Global Warming or Iraq, would seem self evident.

So this time Id like to talk about the five things you cant talk about without being attacked by OSS supporters. Ill take the heat, and as always, Im not suggesting you stop deployment of Linux, Im just suggesting you intelligently cover your backside.

One: Is Linux a Myth?

This strikes me as both the most obvious and the least talked about. We talk about Linux like an operating system when we compare it against Windows, we talk about it as a company when we compare it against Microsoft, and when we describe its attributes it almost seems super-human or god like.

Linux isnt a thing, and it sure isnt a god. When we compare an operating system to another we should be comparing the specific distribution, which is a thing. When we compare it to Microsoft we need a company to do that; Red Hat, Novell and now Oracle provide us with a framework so that we can intelligently compare one to another and assess the differences.

The reason Linux has been abstracted into a concept is so it doesnt have to compete on merit. It can be anything, in concept, it needs to be to win a deal. But we live in the real world where there needs to be a real product and a real support structure behind it. If we are actually doing an evaluation we have to evaluate what we are actually going to end up using and it isnt generic Linux.

This isnt to say Linux cant or doesnt win in real comparisons, only that the majority Ive seen werent real comparisons. As a ex-auditor I care less about who wins than I care about the process that determines the winner. Ive seen too many instances where decisions were made on products, including proprietary products, based on what appears to be graft. One CIO even won a Mercedes Benz for making the right choice well talk about that in a future post.

Presenting the products and companies in abstract was actually rather brilliant, however, I cant find a Steve Jobs-like person I can congratulated for this excellent work. It just seems to have happened that way naturally, but, if you are going to be successful, your justification needs to be solid and for that youll need the specifics.

Linux is a grown up product; it isnt for everything or everyone though. Do your assessment with a real product against real metrics. SuSe and Red Hat are both capable enough to compete without cheating.

Two: Is Linux Secure?

I already said there is no Linux, so how can I now treat it like a thing? The easy path here would be to present the different security models for the different distributions but, for this purpose, Im going to leave Linux in abstract and talk about the unique security problem it represents. Im not saying Windows is more secure either; Im saying the products are so different from each other that comparisons may not actually make much sense, which is why there are reports supporting both sides of this. So, lets start by saying nothing is secure enough if people are involved.

Long before IT stopped being just it, security had three aspects: Physical Safety, Possession Protection, and Intelligence. The way security was breached in all cases was physical; people came in and did harm, s

hmpf, i dont even need to like (or hate) linux to see that this is a biased article, probably sponsored.The guy just spend the whole article deconstructing linux without any kind of factual support.

I was reading his five points and it seems to me that either he got paid for that or he really has no clue about what drives the OSS community. Why is that that everyone that doesn't understand has to bring it down to the money concerns or abstract concepts.

The Five Things You Arent Allowed to Discuss About Linux
Posted by Rob Enderle on Monday 26 February 2007 at 7:44 pm
One: Is Linux a Myth?

Because "Linux" comes in so many different distros, he claims there no such specific thing as Linux. Just like there are so many different versions of Windows, that there's no such specific thing as "Windows"? Five minutes in the penalty box with a beginners book on set theory.

Two: Is Linux Secure?

Based on his answer to One above, he proclaims that any technical analysis of security is impossible, but he will concentrate on other vulnerabilities unique to Linux. He then goes off on a tangent about "pretexting", which is a security vulnerability common to all systems, which at the end of the diatribe, he even admits. A few backhanded barbs about "commie spies" are included.

Three: Do Communes Work?

First he answers "yes, it looks like it", but then goes off about how the commune isn't a happy fairyland where all the members get along (I don't recall any promise of that). He follows on with a silly tangent about the GPL sneaking into your office and stealing all your intellectual property. Yet another idiot who is offended that GPL isn't Public Domain, so people can't just take stuff released under it, polish it, and sell it proprietary-style.

Four: Is Linux Pro-Developer, or Pro-You?

Ill-formed argument-- a continuation of his GPL rant above, really-- claiming you can't make money at Linux because it is not a Ferrari, it's a Ford? Then a weird rant about how the recent reduction in outsourcing is making UNIX and mainframes the hot new thing? This guy's all over the map.

Is Linux is Open?

He says Linux isn't open because every time he opens his mouth and says something really, really stupid, everyone calls him an idiot and tells him to shut up.

Once again, proof that there's nothing so irritating as a dumbass who thinks he's smart.

He says Linux isn't open because every time he opens his mouth and says something really, really stupid, everyone calls him an idiot and tells him to shut up.From all I've seen and read, this is spot on. Enderle isn't much of a journalist.

Now, IMHO, the REAL trouble with Linux in the eyes of his sponsors (yes, I think he is shilling) is that nasty old GPL. Whether you call it Free Software or Open Source, software built under this conceptual model is a disruptive technology that is inexorably changing the

I would argue it is Stallman and the GPL 3.0 do more to kill Linux than anthing Microsoft could conceive of

This is a feeling I have had for quite a while now, though it's not usually a very popular view so I'm forced to keep it quiet.
In the 15 years of Linux, it has almost universally called Linux. Rebranding it to GNU/Linux has never taken off and is an exercise in stubborness at this stage.
It is when I see effort to rebrand or move to relicence Linux the I sometimes think the FSF forget that the code was GPL'd for all to use under those terms for better or for worse, even if that means it being used in a system that isn't prefixed with GNU.
(I know, I know. I'm expecting my karma to go through the floor...)

Just for comfort: I hope your karma will be fine. I find the GNU prefix a load of gnu sh*t as well. It's just ego talking. And you're right about the GPL, at least before someone invented a clause that said you had to accept the clauses of future GPL licenses.

You know what the worst thing is that can happen? That someone mods you up a few points and then down and then up again, etc. Then you'll be banned from posting for some time. It's quite ridiculous, but with so many zealots around, it just might happen. I've been there for saying something innocent but apparently really upsetting to some...

Given GPL3 cannot be applied to the Linux kernel, I can't see GPL3 killing Linux in any way except possibly in being so much better that an alternative to Linux that is licensed under GPL3 gains massive popularity, in part due to licensing.

Which is not impossible, BTW.

Personally, I don't care about the long term survival of "Linux". Linux is a kernel, and not even a particularly interesting one. What I care about is the long term survival of useful Free software. If Linux takes a bullet because, for example, Solaris has a better Free software license, then so long Linux. Nice knowing you.

The day IBM or HP or Red Hat start complaining about the licensing of the GNU tools MIGHT be the day I take that position seriously. Until then, sounds like typical FUD. It's not like those companies haven't had time to consider a position on the GLP 3 draft. More so, remember Sun has considered licensing Solaris under the GPL.

Just a simple fact: if it weren't for the GNU tools, the Linux kernel would not have been possible at the time.Linux depends on the GNU tools, especially on the excellent set of compilers and libraries provided by GNU... GCC, GDB, libc, etc...

Of course... we could not talk about the "success" of Free Software and Open Source without the excellent Linux kernel that we now have, but that is not the issue here.Linus Torvalds made a huge contribution to the world... but to deny the involvement of the FSF foundation, especially the involvement of Richard Stallman... that just shows stupidity and ignorance.

How can Stallman hurt Free Software and Open Source when Stallman was one of the few people that made it possible ?I say to you... it was the GPL license that gave Linux its edge over BSD... it was politics and idealism... dreaming of a better world.GPL contributed to a sort of common ground between companies... which now happily hack together on common projects (like Linux itself);)

So this idealistic fool made this collaboration possible between long time rival companies because of the wonderful GPL and its idealistic approach, and now we don't trust his judgment anymore ?

Just a simple fact: if it weren't for the GNU tools, the Linux kernel would not have been possible at the time.

If it wasn't for Minix, then the Linux Kernel would not have been possible. What if Minix had chosen to use BSD's tools instead?

I say to you... it was the GPL license that gave Linux its edge over BSD... it was politics and idealism... dreaming of a better world.GPL contributed to a sort of common ground between companies... which now happily hack together on common projects (like Linux itself);)

No, it was BSD's legal troubles that gave Linux the edge. If Linus had chosen a different open licence then Linux still would have been a success. Most people just wanted a working, free (primarily free as in beer) *nix on x86 that didn't have any legal questions hanging over it's head. Maybe a few GNU zealots wouldn't have joined in, but then I seem to recall a lot of GNU zealots at the time saying "wait for the HURD", even with Linux's GPL licence. I really doubt the licence choice had that much to do with Linux's success.

I'm not certain how much the "Communist Manifesto" style crap (like your "dreaming of a better world" bit) hurts Linux and the rest of the FOSS community, but I really, really doubt it helps.

That is probably not a bad thing. The article is not worth reading anyway. Basically he uses logic like, "If Friday is happy and Saturday is Sad, July 25th is Antagonistic" to prove that Linux doesn't exist or something. At that point, after the quote, "I already said there is no Linux..." I had to stop reading.

Thank you for posting the article text. Now I can rip it apart bit by bit without waiting for his server to come back. Please keep in mind I'm speaking to the article's author when I say 'you' after this point, because I'm replying to the article text.

1. We don't need to talk about a Linux company to compare it to Microsoft. We're not comparing a company to a company. We're comparing the products of many companies and individuals and the advantages and disadvantages of that vs. Microsoft's products. Many users of Linux don't depend fully on one company for updates, fixes, and support. So to say basically that because Microsoft ties us to one source for these things that means that we must fall into the same trap for other operating systems is narrow-minded at best.

2. Any reasonable IT person will tell you that security is a process and not a product. Having a more secure base to start with is part of that process. Having code review is often part of that process. Running programs that aren't meant to make system-wide changes as users not authorized to make system-wide changes is part of the process. Most Linux distributions do a better job of _supporting_ these processes, and since it's open and editable, can be made moreso by many parties.

3. The FSF is not a hippy nudist farm commune, and the GPL is not a "do your fair share" agreement. The GPL allows people who have a purpose of their own to take a working system and do just the work they need done to support a change to do so instea dof writing a whole system from scratch and duplicating that parts that already work the way they need. Meeting your own needs and giving a little back for others having given you that opportunity is not communism. It's smart in a capitalist marketplace to take the lowest-cost route to your goal. Companies buy pre-existing parts to make their products all the time. Disney takes fairy tales with no copyrights, then copyrights the new work based on it, then lobbies to get those copyrights extended. Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds may have their differences, but they both want you to be able to use their work to do your work. They're not askign for the keys to your car. They just want you to treat their work a certain way if you choose to use it. They don't even care if you don't give out changes you make. They just want to make sure you give out the sources of any binaries you make from _their_ hard work.

4. Employees are not valued on the price of what they work on. They are valued on the amount of money they make the company and the rarity of their skills. The only reason a Ferrari mechanic makes more than a Chevy mechanic is that fewer people know how to work on Ferraris and that the shop owners are able to charge more because the end customer can find fewer competitors since fewer shops work on Ferraris. The goal of the Linux community is not to drive up costs at an employer. It is to do the exact opposite. It's a freely available system which is meant to lower barriers, not raise them. The fact that it does the job of commercial Unix so well for so much less and has built so large a base of trained and experienced administrators and developers that the labor rates have dropped is a positive thing. It means Linux actually has a lower TCO, which is a good thing in a capitalist society. It's a point Microsoft tries to claim. Doing more business with fewer employees who need training that is easier to get is a goal of all good capitalist companies.

5. Linux is open entirely. The minds of some of its proponents are not. Please do not confuse the issue. Blind IT advocacy is bad, but some IT advocacy done with care is a wonderful thing. If Windows doesn't serve a department's needs, the IT department needs to make that clear to the people writing the check. If Linux doesn't meet the needs of a particular project, IT needs to advocate against Linux on that project. If something makes your job much easier and much less stressful while saving your company money, you should always support it vociferously.

Nah - I've learned that most of 'em arrive in real world IT/developer shops and discover that they don't know jack (mostly because they were to busy learning concepts and using outdated stuff to do that).

This leads 'em to do one of three things:

1) (half) realize they can't hack it and go do something else for a living after a couple of years.

2) (just under half) realize that they just have to step it up a notch and manage to do so with varying degrees of success.

3) (jackasses like Enderle) realize they really can't hack it --but are too scared to try at an honest living-- so they either get a teaching certificate w/ the intention of making Education a career, or they become tech writers.

(Caveat: as a guy w/ no CS degree, but is a Sr. Sysadmin at a Fortune 50 company, and has taught CompSci full-time at the collegiate level - these are only conclusions drawn from my experiences. Naturally, YMMV)

... but the fact remains that Microsoft is not on the side of the little guy. The developers who write open-source software (mostly for free) decidedly are.

No matter how much you want to piss and moan about one thing or another not working correctly in Linux, that fact remains. This is why the MS-OSS double standard at Slashdot really doesn't bother me all that much.

Hm. Didn't know who this guy was before. His article seemed like it was written by someone who just doesn't *get* the concepts behind free software.

The bit about outsourcing was hilarious. Linux causes outsourcing. Right. A more accurate statement would be that, in an effort to reduce costs, a number of companies switched to linux and outsourced their IT - two actions unconnected by anything aside from their change in relative expense.

Now outsourcing is slowing and reversing (and the job market's looking sweeter for it), but I don't see the 'switch back to UNIX' he was talking about. Perhaps I'm blind, but IBM, HP, et al are still Linux shops in the servers market.

His tirade on 'Openness' was hilarious. Of course if you shill against the baby of a bazillion IT workers, a percentage of them are going to rail against you. It's not a strike team; it's public opinion. Besides, if you think that's bad for you, check the number of page hits you get whenever you bash Linux, since I understand you've got a history of it. You may change your mind.

Also, I don't know where he gets the idea that discussion isn't allowed. He's got this big shiny soap box to be "Rob Pretenderle" on. As if he's prevented from saying what he says. Douche.

I also noted that Ubuntu was suspiciously missing from the Desktop comparisons, even though it's the most grandma-friendly variant.

Lastly, this is the best example of the *definition* of FUD I've ever seen:"Linux exists in an environment where there is broad collaboration, but no effort to validate the collaborators so the opportunity for traditional, old style, data breach is immeasurable."

Yeah. Except that the CODE is validated before it's merged in. The collaborators' credentials aren't needed; even a bonded shop can go rogue, but as long as you're checking out the product, you're good.

These days, with GUI-installed Linux distributions, Linux suffers from the same problem Windows used to be derided for: services are on by default.

Something I wrote for my website but haven't posted yet:

Linux is much more secure than any version of Windows, both in
design and in practice. There simply isn't any significant malware
(viruses, spyware, adware, trojans, worms, etc.) for Linux. There have
been no widespread viruses or spyware for Linux in all of its
history. There are several reasons for thi

I will grant you that packaging up a product in a Windows installer is a nice thing to have. However, from my point of view developer-friendly also means how easily you can integrate third-party libraries into your application, and in this area Linux has a huge advantage over Windows for a simple reason: there is a standardized ABI for Linux.On Windows, it is a huge pain to link anything to your applicaton that is not written in plain C. Someone else above already mentioned the Boost libraries. STLPort is a

On your first point, Linux is still the most used operating system on web servers. It's also in third place in the realm of IT (based on 2005 server *sales*, CNET): #1, Windows: $17.7 billion; #2, Unix $17.5 billion; #3 Linux $5.7 billion (11%). Then when you factor in that Linux is often slapped out onto servers that a company has already purchased (low cost, good support for aging hardware, high functionality), I'd hardly agree with your assessment that Linux is rarely used on the server. It's not a big dog, but it's not rare. Desktop: you're right.

On your second point, I don't think that the Linux "experts" have an attitude problem. I do think that the "so-called experts" most certainly do. I'm always surprised by how calm and open-minded OSS developers seem to be when I listen to interviews on LUG Radio and such. In fact, they're usually all about getting down to business, and are highly self-critical. It's the forum fanboys that give the "community" a bad name, or think that there is some kind of actual community (maybe I just didn't get my ID badge?).

Simply not true. I see loads of +4 and +5 comments regarding honest and useful critiques of Linux. It just happens that most of the people doing the critical comments of Linux happen to be trolls or people who haven't a clue about anything computer related or who don't remember what they had to learn about using Windows when they were computer-illiterate.

I mean c'mon, we hear comments about the superiority of Visual Studio or the lack of Photoshop or the suckiness of GIMP all the time. It's just that we've stopped seeing as many "my hardware doesn't work" or "i don't know how to do this or that" because user friendliness and hardware support, just to name two areas, have improved significantly.

You aren't allowed to suggest that linux may not be secure, or that the desktop environments for it are kludgy and half-assed, or anything else. It cannot be sanely and calmly discussed in the "linux community".

The "linux community" is not wholy populated with, but has an overwhelming amount of straight-up zealots. People who use linux for philosophical reasons, hate proprietary software because it's proprietary, and